


The Deep Forest

by Argie



Category: Grootrat, Overwatch (Video Game), overwatch au - Fandom
Genre: Bullying, Desperation, Dryads - Freeform, F/M, Flowers, Germany, Kidnapping, Mushrooms, Other, Slow Romance, The Black Forest, The Enchanted Forest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-11-19 06:07:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18131939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argie/pseuds/Argie
Summary: Jamison Fawkes was, many years ago, turned into a Dryad to protect the Deep Forest. It's a job that sounds well and good and full of glory, but none of the other forest Dryads accept him, calling him Rotface or a disease on the forest. Loneliness plagues him and drives him to desperate acts. Raised to be human in a human world, Rae finds adapting to life in the forest harder than she could ever have imagined it to be. Can these two varied and clashing personalities find solace in each other's arms at last? Or will they be doomed to be bound together miserably until the end of their days?





	1. In which Jamison finds his Sunlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AkaiEngarde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkaiEngarde/gifts).



 

     Loneliness wears on a soul, breaks it down, and leaches hope like fall leaches the forest leaves of green. In such a state was Jamison Fawkes made captive. Dryads were a social folk, as they lived and communed with the Forest that made them, but Jamison was unlike the others, a rare breed apart. He lived apart, for they wanted nothing to do with the Aspect of Rot, who cavorted with mushrooms, danced in the fallen leaves of their sleeping wards, and fed upon the essence of their deaths.

     Jamison was an integral part of the Forest and its workings, but that didn’t make him well liked, or even well tolerated. The other Spirits shunned him when possible and tormented him when it was not. For all they cared, he could fall to the fungus and rot that he cultivated. He was alone, and more-so, he was lonesome.

     The creature, tall and wispy, mottled like the Birch that made him, eternally autumn yellow foliage sparse on his all too human face, walked the Forest with slow, deliberate steps. All dryads could move with blinding speed, but most chose to move as Jamison did now, drinking in the Forest, aiding where they could, and easing where they could not. The Aspect of Rot touched trees too far gone to infestations, pollution, or simple old age. . . And started the process of death and renewal. The Forest lived on because of him. . . And still Jamison was alone, for none of the spring-loving Spirits wanted anything to do with the Bringer of Death.

      _I’m the bloody Forest reaper._  He thought to himself, quite morose, as he wandered. _I only do what I must! It’s not fair!_

     Jenna, the Spirit of the Fox, pulled back from a mindless finger that Jamison was running along a long dead log. “Hey!” She furrowed her brow. “Don’t you have someone else to go and kill? It’s not my time!”

     Blinking, he jerked his hand back, stepping away from the affronted Spirit. Jenna was beautiful, and he felt himself quicken at the sight of her, the skin of a vixen draped about her shoulders and nothing else covered her nakedness. He groaned softly and took another step towards safety. This female was one of the most adept at tormenting him.

     “You didn’t think that I’d be interested in _you_ , Jamison. . . Did you? I saw the way you looked at me last Autumn when I Called for a mate. . .” She laughed, running a hand down her ample hip. “Poor little outcast. . . No one will ever love Death. Go home and stay away from my grove!”

     The cruel words cut into the male’s heart and he heaved a sigh. No use in fighting it, really. His loins ached with the remembrance of Jenna’s Call, but he dared not deal with _that_ problem until he was safely out of sight in his own grove, no matter how much it hurt to hide it.

     He was thankful for the speed with which he was endowed when he was made. Home, he let his not inconsiderable cock pop out of it’s sheath like a sapling in fertile ground. It didn’t take him long to jerk himself off, spattering a corner of the grove with his essence. It hurt him to do that, but where else could he give it, except back to the Forest that gave him life?

     He had just finished when he heard a rustle in the bush beside him and he froze. Jamison had been so absorbed in his emissions that he hadn’t noticed a human walk almost into his home. He wasn’t sure if he was more shocked or ashamed. Humans weren’t supposed to know that Dryads existed. . . And he’d almost blown it.

     He looked like a tree. It was part of the Magic he’d been given. He could not be distinguished from a true Birch in this form unless someone tried to cut him down. Thankfully, the mousy little woman who stumbled into his clearing had no signs of machinery that would damage him.

     “Oof! Oh. Here we are.” The woman murmured. Rae Fontaine was a scientist from the local conservatory and was tasked with inventorying the Forest. It was one of the last remaining strongholds of wilderness in Europe, and the German government was determined that it should remain alive and unsullied. “Oh, you poor things. . .”

     The trees, so recently covered by Jamison’s passions, had sprouted fresh fungus and the threads bound the fallen leaves and needles into grotesque clumps. Rae had tagged most of the trees the last time she had been through. One of them was completely clogged with mushrooms now, an unfamiliar specimen of which she spirited away into a baggy for analysis back at the lab. She blinked several times when her eyes set on Jamison, and for a heartbeat and a half, he thought he’d been somehow found out.

     “Well now. I. . . Don’t remember you. I should, though. You’re such a handsome thing.” She ran her fingers over his bark and he nearly lost his control over himself right then and there. Those fingers were warm, soft, inviting. Things he hadn’t felt in many a year. Rae’s hands deftly dug a bit of blue fabric from her coat pocket and tied a little scientific tag to one of Jamison’s branches. A date, and GPS location, and her name.

     He could barely contain his excitement, his desire, and his joy. “Handsome! She called me handsome!” His mind crowed into the quiet of her bustling cataloging. He couldn’t see what she’d tied about him, but his heart relished any contact she made with his bark. He could still feel the warmth bubbling up like fresh sap under the surface and was giddy with it.

     When she left, he almost followed, but she was human, and the Laws were absolute. Humans didn’t know about Dryads. Even the ones who were outcasts.

     Crestfallen, Jamison turned to peer at the tag about his bicep. _**09.12.2058 48.7443 N**_ _ **°**_ _ **8.0972 E**_ _ **°**_ _ **Rae Fontaine**_ It was a beautiful name, one worthy of the sun. His sun. His sunlight, his starlight, and his moon. . . Sighing, he settled his back against his favorite log, and he sang. It was a quiet song, full of longing and pain, and it burned it’s way out of him like fire. It was lullaby and lamentation and it ignited something within him akin to the Call, but had nothing to do with mating. . . Well. Mostly nothing, anyway.

~*~

     Rae paused and cocked her ear with a shiver. She’d heard something, or thought she had, and it reminded her of a lone wolf howling. Lone wolves were the most dangerous kind as they tended to be underfed, and the sun was going down. Already the forest was cast with fearful shadows and it was getting chilly. Rushing for her little two door, she dove into the seat and slammed the door shut, breathing like she’d been chased, running the whole way.

     “Okay, Rae. Pull yourself together. This is stupid. There haven’t been wolves in the Black Forest for decades now. It was probably just a lost hound trying to find it’s owner.” The scientist took a few moments to calm herself, touching the necklace at her throat. Her grandfather had given it to her when she was a girl, before he’d been killed in the omnic wars that had destroyed so much of the country. It reminded her to rely on herself, keep her wits about her, and to go forth and make the world green again.

     Drawing a deep breath, she started her car, and drove back to her home. She stopped at the Deep Forest University, with it’s agriculture wing still under construction, and left the new fungus sample with the scientists who would analyze and document its properties. Every new plant or fungi found could mean a new cure for something within the world, or a new food source to feed the downtrodden and oppressed. The scholars did good work, humanitarian work, and Rae was proud to be counted among their number.

     She stood outside, the dusk now more purple and black than red and orange, and gazed back towards the forest. Something was causing that little grove trouble, and she should go back soon and figure out what was killing it so quickly. Much of the rest of the Forest was thriving, reclaiming land that humans and omnics both had taken from it in their greed and violence. . . But something was different in that patch. What was causing the mushrooms to spike like that? Was it some sort of thermal up-welling that warmed the air and made it more humid? She berated herself for not taking air and soil samples for this visit but nothing had seemed out of the ordinary when she’d first found the grove and tagged its trees.

     And then there was that odd tree that she had somehow missed the first time through. It was in a rather obvious and prominent place within the clearing. How on earth had she failed to tag it? Yes, something was definitely going on in that thicket. But what? More samples were needed. . . But not right now.

     Rae yawned, stretching herself upwards and scratching her side idly. Dinner, then sleep. Tomorrow was Analytics with Professor McDade, and Friday she would be Dr. Halbraun’s aid in the chemistry lab with the first years. Saturday was her swim team practice, and there was no way she was going for a hike after spending the morning pushing her legs and lungs to their limits. Sunday, then, if she’d recovered enough from swimming, she’d go and spend the day collecting more samples from the little Forest grove.

~*~

     “Oh, I’m so stupid, stupid, stupid!” Jamison lamented silently as he thrashed about his thicket and upset his fungi. “I never should have let her get away! No one else would ever think I was handsome! I could make the others understand. I’ll keep her here, with me, safe. No one would dare come into the Grove of Rot. They’re afraid of me. Afraid of my power!

     “Ha! Who am I kidding? I’m never going to see Rae Fontaine ever again. I’m so stupid! Idiotic beyond believing!” He kicked a fair sized rock and sent it careening into a bush, causing three deer, a fox, and a flock of starlings to flee in a panic.

     “Sorry. . .” Jamison muttered sullenly, not really feeling all that sorry for the animals and mostly feeling sorry for himself. He’d been so close to having his chance and he’d completely blown it. “Damnit!”

     “Oh Rae! Rae! Rae!” Corwin, the raucous Spirit of the Birds, mocked him. “Precious Rae! Sunshine and Sunlight in my darkness!”

     “Sh-shut up, Corw-w-w-win.” Jamison stammered, tripping over the unfamiliar feeling of words on his tongue. How did that menace know his thoughts? Did he mutter in his sleep? That would be incredibly awkward. . . “Go. . . Go away. You. . . You’re not-t-t-t. . . Welcome here. . . L-leave.”

     “Or what? You’ll send your army of mushrooms after me?” Corwin laughed and danced from limb to limb on the old dead pine he’d chosen as a perch. “I don’t fear you, little Jami, youngest of the Forest Spirits. You have no power over the Birds!”

     Furrowing his brow, the Dryad growled deep in his chest, causing a shuddering in the ground as his grove responded to his almost soundless plea. The trees shook themselves, rattling branches and dumping Corwin unceremoniously on his arse in a puddle of slime fungus.

     “Ugh! Disgusting!” He screamed in fury. “You are the most loathsome, vile nightmare this Forest has ever endured. At least your predecessor knew her place! Don’t get too full of yourself _Rotface_ , you aren’t as all powerful as everyone believes. Even Death can die!”

     “Go, C-corwin. Now.”

     “Feck off!”

     The trees rattled again in answer to Jamison’s rage and anxiety. Corwin got the message and melted into the form of a particularly large magpie. He spattered dung on one of the Dryad’s favorite sleeping hollows as a parting jibe and then he was gone.

     Jamison stood as still as one of his trees, stiller, like a monolith that was carved to look like a tree, until he could no longer hear wings. “Damn.” He whispered and slid to the ground, dipping his feet into a little pool hidden under a boulder. Shivering, he whispered again. “Damn.”

     He couldn’t do this alone forever. Even Death needed a partner to keep his back safe.

_Rae Fontaine. . ._

~*~

     She may have intended to return that weekend, but it ended up being a month and a half before Rae found herself with the time and opportunity to go back into the Forest. Life was demanding for a young scientist, and she had to battle a small fungal infection from the sample she’d taken from her glade. She chided herself on not using the right protective gear when dealing with a potentially new and dangerous species. Thankfully, the infection was relatively short lived in terms of how tenacious fungal infections tended to be.

     Scratching lazily at her arm, phantom itching from the healed over scabs, Rae took the deer trail she’d discovered towards the mushroom filled clearing. Crows made a cacophonous racket in the trees above her head, causing the brittle autumn leaves, barely clinging to the otherwise bare branches, to cascade down around her. Her breath puffed out with each step. The uphill climb wasn’t unpleasant, but it was not easy, especially in the chill of mid November. There was no snow, but frost held on in the shadows and hollows of old trees.

     The forest seemed asleep. Surely, at least half of the inhabitants hibernated through the coldest months, saving their energy to return when life was a little easier. Rae smiled. “Don’t we all wish we could hibernate through the tough parts of life sometimes?” She loved the Forest at this time of year. It was so quiet. . . Barring the occasional flock of obnoxious birds like today. Even the trilling of the winter songbirds seemed muted, withdrawn. It was magical and heartrendingly secluded.

     “Mmmmmhmn.” Said a voice behind her. Rae jumped, screamed, and tripped over a rotting branch all in one heartbeat. She would have applauded her ability to multitask at that level if she’d had the mind to pay attention to such things. She peered into the dim forest around her, squinting and readjusting her glasses on her nose.

     “Must have been the wind in the branches.” She rationalized, picking herself up off the ground and rubbing her elbow. She’d nailed it on a rock upon landing and it made her fingers tingle. Muttering under her breath, she continued on the path to her destination. “Nothing funny about hitting your funny bone.”

     “Hnk. . . Hnkhnk.” It sounded like the trees were laughing at her and Rae shook her head. She didn’t normally imagine voices in the wind this way. Perhaps the fungus or the drugs she’d used to get rid of it effected her mind in a way she hadn’t anticipated. . . She hadn’t been drinking, and didn’t use recreational drugs, so she was baffled by the strangeness in her perceptions.

     “I probably just need to be more social with people and less social with my work.” She sighed, stopping just shy of the ridge that hid the mushroom clearing. Almost there, and she thought she might stop for lunch. “-Wait, what?”

     There it was, the tree she had tagged the last time she’d been along this way. The tree she had tagged right in the _**CENTER**_ of the glade. . . And here it stood rooted, a good quarter of a mile downhill and seemingly completely happy and healthy, unaffected by its mysterious translocation. Yes, the medicine was definitely affecting her brain. She double checked the tag, but there it was. Date, last September, GPS coordinates, and her name, plain as day.

     Rae sat down on a stone, hard, jarring a plume of breath from her lungs as she stared at the tree, the tag, and her current location. Could she have mis-remembered where she saw the tree? Triple checking the tag, she ran the coordinates. No, that was definitely a quarter of a mile from her current location. For a split moment she considered if she had flubbed the original location read somehow, but her GPS tracker was working fine, and had been working fine every time she used it for the past month and a half.

     “What the actual, hypothetical, figurative, literal, esoteric _ **fuck**_.” She muttered, brow furrowed so hard her face hurt. This sort of thing didn’t happen. SOMETHING had to be wrong with her readings. She plopped down on the stone again and bent her head to take out the batteries in the GPS unit and replace them with fresh. When she stood and stepped over to the tree, still looking at the unit, Rae reached up to grab the tag and her hand slid through empty air. She missed her grab a few more times before looking up. . .

     The tree was gone.

~*~

     Jamison shuddered with joy as he watched Rae in the clearing. He could feel her growing fear. Feel her desire to run, but the glint in her eyes was that of an educated woman bent on figure out what was going on. He’d given her a mystery to solve. . . But he needed her to run.

     She was spooked, but with her hand wrapped tightly around the pendant she wore, she stood firm. He knew what he needed to do to make her flee. Deep in his chest, he moaned, calling to the roots of the trees to rise up, to shake the earth, and to herd her towards her new life. Her rebirth. Jamison was the Aspect of Rot and Decay and Death, but he was also the Aspect of Renewal, Rebirth, and the Cycle of Life. All life must end. And out of that end came the Beginning.

     As roots popped out of the soil behind her, barring her way to her old life, Jamison cackled with glee. NOW she ran. She ran screaming, terrified voice shrill with emotion and adrenaline. She ran before him as the hind before the hunter and it made him want her all that much more. NEED her. . . He ached with it.

     Rae tripped over a branch and jumped back to her feet, her frenzied gasping pumped clouds of vapor into the freezing air, leaving a clear trail for him to follow, corralling her ever closer to where he wanted her. . . And like a cartoon, she popped through the underbrush and out into open air.

~*~

     Time stopped. Rae was absolutely convinced of this, because she was flying, floating before a one hundred eighty foot shear cliff face. To her left, she could hear the crash of a river that moved so swiftly it never froze. To her right, just barely, she could see the clock tower of the University. It was surreal. She thought of how beautiful it all was, and that even if she was going to die, she would at least die with that image in her mind. “Grandfather would approve.” She found herself thinking as gravity took over and she began to descend.

     She thought for sure that she was too far out to catch herself on a ledge, but she almost immediately began hitting shrubs and roots that stuck out from the stone face. The adrenaline in her brain kicked in again and she twisted around, trying to grasp and grapple with the plants and rocks, anything to break her fall. She felt two of her fingers break, and her left leg, but somehow she managed to slow her decent enough that when she hit the ground. . . She was relatively sure she only broke about five ribs, and possibly her spine. . . And there was a somewhat jagged rock lodged against her kidney. . .

     Toes? No response. No, it was definitely her spine. Fingers? Ouch! Lower spine. If anyone managed to find her, she’d live her life a paraplegic, most likely. She’d never swim again. Defeated, tears streamed from her eyes. She couldn’t even see the world around her clearly. Her glasses had been lost in flight and it left her nearly legally blind.

     “Oh hmm.” Said a voice. Rae didn’t even have the energy to scream anymore.

     “Please.” She begged brokenly. “Help. . . Call medics. . . Spine crushed. . .”

     “Ooooh. . .” A manic sort of giggle broke out from the person. Probably a homeless guy from town out looking for pine nuts in the brush. “I c-c-c-an help.”

     “Please. I have a phone. . . In my bag. It. . . Should be nearby. . .”

     “Ehehehe. . . Phone? No no no. No ph-ph-one. . . But I. . . Will help you. Yes. Yes I will help. . . But. . .” She saw the blurry outline look from side to side furtively. “You h-h-have. . . t-to promise me. . . Tell me. . . hehehe Promise. . .”

     “What? Yeah. . . I’ll do whatever. . . you ask, just please. . . It hurts and I need help!” It was difficult to breathe, and her tongue tasted of her own blood.

     “Will you. . . Give m-m-m-me . . . y-your full name?”

     What an absolutely odd request. He was likely someone who needed mental help, but if he would just get her phone, or go to town for help. . . She was pretty sure she would survive. . . Unable to swim, unable to hike. . . Was it worth it? She heard her Grandfather’s voice, clear as it had ever been. _“Life. . . Finds a way.”_

~*~

     “Rae Rose Fontaine.” Her voice was heady with Death, with Dread, and Jamison soaked it up like a weed soaks up sunshine. Rae Rose Fontaine. Her full name. Her True Name. He could feel the power in the words she gave him and those words bound her to him.

     Jamison had tried to help her, tried to make it so that she wasn’t dead when she fell. She’d been going much faster than he had when he’d fallen off this same cliff, and as such she’d cleared much farther than him. He’d sent roots and shoots and even a boulder out where she could reach, hoping to ease her into a slide. . . As it was, he was supremely relieved that she still breathed, and even spoke, when he emerged at her side.

     “Rae. . . Rose. . . Fontaine.” He spoke again the name of his Sunlight, slowly, carefully, making sure to use the same inflections and stress. Such things mattered, after all, and he had no intention of ever losing her. “Rae. . . Rose. . . Fontaine. . . I, Jamison. . . Andrew. . . Fawkes, Aspect of. . . Renewal. . . Bind thee. . . To my side. . . To my. . . Heart. My soul. . . Is as. . . Your soul. . . And your soul. . . Is as mine.”

     The mixing of blood was needed to seal the pact. With a gleeful cackle, he tore lose a shard of his wooden arm, dripping with his own sap like blood. Pushing it into the earth, the living lance burst up and through her body triggering ancient, unspeakable magics.

~*~

     Okay, she was either having a VERY bad dream or she was already dead and in some sort of weird Limbo where she could still feel pain but everything else was just completely wacko. This guy, whomever he was, was speaking some sort of binding over her, like words could make her not go home. . . Yeah, definitely dead. That was the only explanation. “Strange,” she found herself thinking. “I didn’t really think there was an actual afterlife. Wouldn’t Professor McDade be fascinated by this. . . Her studies said there wasn’t anything but quiet, unrealized darkness in death. Wouldn’t she be surprised to find that it was actually a Forest that was full of crazy men with silly binding spells. . .”

     And then it hit her. Light and bells and fire all along her body. It set her aflame like a torch in the darkest nights and her screaming startled several animals out of their hibernation cycles. She looked down her body to find a strange vine or root had punctured her mid-section, lifting her a few inches from the earth. _Oh. Well._ She thought. _Maybe this is actually Hell?_ But the wound didn’t hurt, it pulsed with the beat of a heart not her own. Slowly, the two different beats became one. . . And the vine-thing pulled out of her, dropping her flat, and leaving a tiny wooden ‘belly-button’.

     “If I’m still alive,” she rationalized, “I’m going into shock. This is all so surreal. . .”

     But she could feel her toes. . . And her vision began to clear. . . “Wait. . . Wha?” She murred drunkenly. Rae knew she couldn’t see without her glasses and a return of her vision made no sense now. “Wha?” She muttered again and passed into blackness.

 


	2. In which Rae finds herself changed

     Jamison felt like he owned the entire world. She’d given him her name freely, perhaps in ignorance, but it was still freely given. Rae Rose Fontaine was his. Then it hit him.

     “...Shit...”

     She’d heard him speak HIS full name in the spell. He blinked down at her unconscious body and pursed his lips. She was gorgeous, but if she knew his name, that made her dangerous. That danger thrilled through him and made him ache.

     And there she lay, healed and all his. . . The dryad groaned, sounding like creaking timbers in a shifting oak, and pulled his dick from it’s sheath. She was so small compared to him. . . But surely. . . Women gave birth all the time. Their bodies were meant for big things, weren’t they? Yes, yes of course. He’d just. . . A little bit, yes. . . Just a little. It would feel wonderful and she’d be fine. . .

     With a gentleness that belayed his great size and brutish strength, he peeled her human clothing away from her skin. Already it was becoming more barklike, and tiny sprouts had burst from the top of her shoulders. It would eventually become a cloak of drooping branches if he was any judge. . . A beautiful mantle for a beautiful creature. Next to her body, his cock throbbed with need. It was bigger around than her arm, almost as big at the tip as her head. This was going to be a very tight fit. . .

     Jamison groaned at the thought, his aching cock twitching and jumping as he pushed her legs apart and placed it against her opening. Just a little. . . Just a little, right? It wouldn’t hurt. Surely. . . He took a deep breath, and pushed just a little.

     It was like being suspended in a warm soup, or space, perhaps. It was silent, and she couldn’t see anything. Rae knew she was dead and this was the afterlife, but it was so. . . Leisurely. Pin pricks of what seemed like stars blinked in and out of existence around her, and she felt herself move through the vastness of her own mind. This death thing wasn’t so bad after all, was it?

     The quiet peace was shattered by a rending tear in the blackness. She woke with a blood curdling scream as something pressed between her legs, inside her. Something far, FAR too large to fit! “NO! NO! STOP!!!”

     Her tormentor skittered backwards at her cry, a look of stricken pain on his elongate features. “I. . . I’m s-sorry. I’m so s-sorry. . . I. . . Just thought. . . It. . .” He stammered ineffectually while Rae gathered herself and her scraps of clothing about her. Fallen off a cliff, paralyzed, pierced with roots, miraculously alive, and now taken against her will. TALK about bad days. . .

     “You didn’t think!” She snarled at the creature and then stopped short. She had expected something a bit more. . . Human. “What _are_ you?”

     It bit it’s lip. . . He. . . Bit his lip. . . For surely something with a dick that size was undoubtedly male. It was almost endearing, how shy and unsure he was. Almost. He’d just tried to rape her with a cock the size of . . . Of. . . An elephant dong. She shuddered, holding her chest against the cold that she thought she should be feeling. Adrenaline must still be keeping her warm. She’d be hypothermic soon. “Well? Are you going to tell me what in the name of all nine of Dante’s hells is going on?”

     Jamison worried his lip like a wolf worried a bone. He’d not meant to hurt her. He just needed a little bit of relief. . . “I. . . Am a . . . Dryad.” He said, finally. “And so are. . . So are you. . . Or. . . You will. . . B-b-be. Soon.”

     “Dryads don’t exist. Try again.” Rae snapped. Her eyes, he could see, were already turning from human gray to something darker and more Spirit. They reminded him a little, in their anger, of Corwin’s eyes. . . But more they reminded him of Lady Agatha, who had made him. She was so beautiful. . .

     “Do too. . .”

     “Do not!”

     “Do.”

     “NOT.”

     “Just because. . . You haven’t. . . Found it. . . Or seen it. . . Or believe it-t-t-t not. . . Doesn’t make. . . Something untrue.” He countered.

     Rae opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it, raised a finger. . . Shut it, and dropped her hand. “That still doesn’t explain why I’m here or why you just tried to violate me.”

     “You are. . . My mate.” He said, simply. And to him, it _was_ that simple. He had bound them. She knew his true name.

     “I don’t even know who you are! I don’t even know your name!”

     “Oh.” Jamison blinked, canting his head to the side, making his leaves rustle with the motion. She. . . Didn’t remember. She didn’t know! What luck!

     “I am Jamison. I am the Aspect of Renewal.” His words felt more fluid, confident. “Most of the Forest. . . They call me Rotface. . . Or the M-m-mushroom Man. . . I bring Death, but also new life.”

     Rae blinked and sat down suddenly on the stony ground. He could see her mind trying to wrap around what he told her. He could see her trying to catalog it, try to rationalize it, make it fit into her neat little box of Modernity and Science.

     “Not. . . Not everything is rational.” He said, very softly. He wanted her to understand. NEEDED her to understand. He knew he could keep her captive and safe in his grove, but he knew she needed to accept it to truly be happy. “I. . . I am sorry that I hurt you. That was not. . . Not my intention. I just. . . It hurts if I can’t. . . And I haven’t had a mate since. . . Since Lady Agatha took me. I. . . Am truly sorry.

     He looked contrite. Rae logged that in her mind. He seemed to have SOME morals then. Everything about today was upside down and sideways, and somehow she felt SORRY for this. . . This thing. She hesitated to call him a man, because he surely was not human. He admitted it. But. . . A dryad? They were myths, legends that her Grandfather told stories about in her childhood. He told her that anyone who had a way with the gardens and forest was part Dryad. She had laughed and told him he was silly.

     Had Grandfather been right?

     Rae’s hand clasped about her pendant, the only clothing left on her body, and she sighed. “Alright. You’re a Dryad. . . You say I’m going to become one soon. . . You just tried to rape me because you say I’m your mate and it hurts if you don’t get to screw me.” She paused. “Do you realize just how _FUCKED UP_ that is?!”

     Her voice rose with her ire, coloring her cheeks pinkly. It didn’t help that the idea of being taken by him was actually kind of hot. She had had fantasies as a young woman about what it would be to be with something. . . Inhuman. Now was her chance, except that she was far too angry to listen to her libido. Besides, he’d hurt her. She could feel the ache between her legs, the fire. Something had probably torn. It would be unpleasant healing.

     “I said I was sorry.” Jamison said, hanging his head in shame, his cock still hard as the rocks she sat upon, twitching and bouncing with the ire of her words.

     “Oh for god’s sake, come here or we’ll never get anywhere.”

     He obeyed before he realized he did so. Part of the name binding, perhaps, or perhaps it was his desire to please her in whatever she asked. She was his Sunlight, his Empress. He worshiped her as the other Spirits worshiped the Earth and the Sun and the Moon. She was sacred in his mind. “Yes, Lady.”

     “Shut up, I’m not a lady. I’m not YOUR lady, and just. . . Shut up.”

     “Yes, Lady.” Jamison replied, barely hiding a smirk as he stood in front of her. She was absolutely minuscule. It took him by surprise every time it registered. How could he ever make her completely his if she remained so small? Had he been that small once?

     “Oof. You’re fucking huge.” She growled, climbing to her feet and coming face to face with his dick. “Christ. You tried to stick this in me? What do you have in that head of yours? Fungus and bird nests?”

     The male winced slightly and pursed his lips. “Human women birth babies every day!” He protested, feeling a bit attacked. This wasn’t at all how he’d envisioned this happening. Not one bit.

     It was a shock to both of them when she wrapped her fingers, all ten of them, around his shaft. “Jesus.” She swore again and moved those hands up and down, her warm fingers not quite reaching the entire way ‘round. “Let’s just get this out of the way and then we can actually converse without you trying to hump me like some rabid dog. . .”

     “Hey!” He squeaked, voice shrill with both indignation and pleasure. Her warm fingers lit him on fire and he was approaching climax faster than he had in years. “Ohhhhh.”

     “Yeah, yeah. Just c’mon. I don’t want to be here all night. I need to go home. I can’t be your mate, but I can help you out, since you did something weird and saved me from dying. I can at least do this.”

     “Wut?” He spluttered, shock causing him to spatter her face with jets of spunk. “Er. Sorry….” He dabbed at the mess he’d made as she stood there, dripping, and glaring at him like he’d called his mother a poxy whore.

     “There. Now, where are my clothing? I need to get dressed. I need to go home.”

     “No.”

     “What do you mean ‘no’? You can’t keep me here against my will.”

     “Actually. . . I can.”

     “I swear I’ll scream again if you try to man handle me. . .”

     “No one would hear you, Darl’, and I don’t need to manhandle you to make you stay. You belong with me. . . You gave me your word.”

     “I did no such thing.”

     “You gave me your name. I can make you do whatever I want.”

     “Bullshit.”

     “Stop.” She froze, though her eyes would have destroyed a star if they’d had the power to do so. “You may not leave the forest. Besides. . . Look.”

     He pointed to a still puddle in the rock face and Rae, freed from the command to stop, stepped over to look into the pool. “Oh.” She gasped in shock, touching her cheeks, her face. Under the mess he’d left, her skin looked grayish and her eyes were clouding over with blackness. “What did you DO TO ME!?”

     “I saved your life. . .” He said simply. “You belong to me now. To the Forest. You will become a Spirit like me. You would have died, but I saved you.” She didn’t need to know that it was his fault she’d fallen off that cliff, or that he knew exactly where he was driving her.

     Rae shivered though she wasn’t cold. Probably because she was some sort of tree monster like him now. Did trees really feel the cold the way humans did? She. . . She couldn’t go home. Tears, thicker than she remembered them being, and slightly sticky, pricked in her eyes and spilled over her lashes. Her entire life’s work was gone, just like that. . . Because she’d met some mythical creature in a forest. . .

     “What is this? Fucking NARNIA?” She snarled in frustration and loss.

     “Oh. . .” He moved to her then, wiping her face with leaves dipped in the pool, and pulled her against his form. She felt so warm to him, still, even after he’d initiated her Change. . . He hoped she never lost that. “I’m sorry, Rae. I’m so sorry. . . You can never return. They would never accept you. . . But. . . But I’m here. I’m here for you. . .”

     She cried then, making sticky tracks down her dirty face, cried in a way she hadn’t since childhood. She cried for her personal loss. She cried for her humanity. Rae even cried for her Grandfather, long dead and never truly mourned until now. “Oh Grandpapa.” She murmured, hiding her face against Jamison’s chest. Somehow he’d scooped her up and cradled her there like a child. She felt oddly safe. Protected. It felt good in a way that was completely unexpected. “Grandpapa. . . I miss you.”

     Jamison held her close, rocking her with an instinctive motion, soothing her matted hair and the little sproutlings along her spine. “Shhhhh.” He murmured. “Shhhh.”

     Rae drifted in and out of a doze. She was vaguely aware of motion, rocking, but also the trees around them shifted. He was taking her somewhere. She was too tired, too played out, to really care where at that point. The Dryad crooned reassuringly, and she thought he even sung to her under his breath.

     The last thought she had before she fell into darkness, was that for a twelve and change giant tree monster. . . He might not be all that bad.

 

~*~

 

     Dryads, by nature, were not terribly gentle things. They were stiff, strong, and moved with a deliberate grace, but gentle was not something most were capable of. Jamison made a point of being so. He carried his Sunlight to the glade, comforted her in her distress, cradled her like a child, and did everything he could to make her feel safe and protected. He would do anything to protect her. . .

     Once they were home, he called up a thick bed of moss on a giant log, long ago fallen and caved in to make a manger-like depression, and set Rae upon it. With a slow, meticulous movement, he cleaned her body of debris and lingering fungal slime. No stretch of skin or strand of hair was too tiny a detail to attend. Already, her hair follicles were beginning to sprout with tiny buds.

     Jamison smiled and sat back to watch her sleep. Fungus began to pop up on her skin and in her hair and he squawked in annoyance and carefully removed them before they spread. “No no no. Not her. She’s not for you.” He muttered and knelt beside her, keeping his vigil against the growth of the rot.

     “Oh, and she’s for you, Rotface?” A snide voice murmured from the edges of his glade.

     “Shadow.” Jamison growled softly, turning his orange eyes on the flickering not-being that clung to the darkness under the trees. No one really knew what Shadow’s name actually was. That was just what everyone called him, and it fit. He was never truly within your sight, staying to the shadows, perhaps he WAS just a shadow. He was the Aspect of Stealth and Trickery and was Jenna’s usual mate. It rankled that, in his joy, Shadow had found them and was casting unhappiness into their midst. Would that Rae never had to meet this one. . . Not likely, but one could still wish.

     “Go away, Shadow. You aren’t welcome here.”

     “Oh, no one but she and your mushrooms are welcome here, Jamison Fawkes.” Shadow laughed softly, like the wind through fall leaves. “Where did you find her? You know the Elders won’t let you keep her, right? No humans may know what we are. . .”

     “Well, she’s not human anymore.”

     There was a pause while the Spirit digested that information. “You changed her? Without permission from the Council...”

     “A Dryad may save the life of his mate through whatever means necessary!”

     “You Mated. . . A human. . . And then changed her. . .”

     “Mhm.” Jamison’s voice was full of triumphant spite.

     “You put her life in danger so that you could change her. . .” There was actually a small amount of admiration in Shadow’s voice. He seemed to be impressed with Jamison’s ability to find and take advantage of a loophole in their laws.

     “Yes. . .” The Dryad wasn’t particularly pleased with himself for the subterfuge, but it had been a means to the end he required. He would get over the bit of shame. Rae was HIS now. “Now leave. I need to tend my Mate through the change.”

     “This won’t be the last of it. You know that, Rotface.” The snide rejoinder snapped through the glade like thunder and then Shadow was gone.

 

~*~

 

     Months passed in the Forest. Rae spent many of them lost in her own thoughts. She ignored Jamison as much as she could. He tried so hard to catch her eye. . . And she knew there were times when he was unable to help himself and he’d get himself off while she slept. She could see it in his eyes the next morning. The look of longing with a touch of shame, and she just didn’t get it. Why didn’t he just go find something his size to stick his dick in for a while. . .

     As far as she knew, they were the only Dryads in the Forest. She had never met one of the others he spoke of and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. The way he painted them, they were jerks. Then again, so was he. He’d kidnapped her after having almost been killed. That was pretty jerkish in her book.

     “Oi, darl’.” His voice, which had become stronger and more like what it might have once been, broke into her dreary reverie. Spring was upon them, and the air was warmer. Her face, which had been turned towards the tiny rays of warming sunlight, was spattered with cold water as something wet and slimy was dropped into her lap. “I gotcha somethin’.”

     She looked at the gift, then at him, then the gift and back at him. “A fish.” He had one half hanging out of his mouth and was crunching away contentedly.

     “Yep! Spring’s first!”

     “Uhm.” The fish, which she had thought was soundly dead, took that moment to flop upwards, slamming into her jaw and clicking her teeth together. “Nnk!”

     “Gotcha!” Jamison snatched the flailing scaly offender and held it for Rae.

     “Uhm.” She rubbed her cheek. “No thanks.”

     He looked crestfallen for a moment and then shrugged. “More for me then!”

     Rae sighed, watching him devour the fish, not unlike a bear. . . If bears were made out of wood and leaves. He tried so hard. She thought she might give him more of a chance. . . But. . . He’d KIDNAPPED her. Stolen her life from her and sentenced her to live in a limbo of not-life.

     “I’m going for a walk.” She announced, standing.

     “I’ll go wi-”

     “No. You stay here. I’ll be fine on my own.”

     “. . . Alright, darl’. Just. . . Be careful.”

     “Yeah, yeah. Can’t let humans see me. Can’t leave the forest. Don’t play with fire. Don’t run with scissors.” She could see the hurt her words inflicted and pursed her lips. It should have felt better to cause him pain, but it just made her feel like a villain. “Meh. I’ll be back later.”

     Jamison frowned and sighed as she left. He never liked her being out of his sight, but he couldn’t keep her a captive in the grove forever. She had always loved her freedom and he’d taken most of that away from her. The least he could do was to let her wander her new home. Maybe, eventually, she’d come to love it as much as she had before she’d been forced to stay.

     Keeping himself busy and distracted while she was gone was a chore. He organized his mushrooms, tried to tidy the grove. She liked flowers and light, and didn’t like the sickeningly sweet smell of rot, so he kept the grove better. . . For her. There was even the beginning of a healthy meadow in the very center, where the best sun got through the trees. Spring truly was upon them.

     “ACK!”

     Her cry of startled fear had him moving before he truly registered the sound. There was squealing and snarling and he could hear Rae’s quiet pleas and soothing tone. She’d startled something. . .

     “Shh. It’s okay, mama. . . I was just leaving. I didn’t mean to trip over your baby. . . Shhhh.”

     Jamison burst into the bright sunlight of a river meadow and came face to face with an angry wild sow. She, the boar, and her brood of piglets were gathered around a low branched oak tree, in which Rae was perched precariously. “GEROFFAHER!” His roar of challenge shook the entire glade and sent animals scurrying for cover, including the sow and all of the piglets. Everything but the boar, who turned to challenge the newcomer. Nothing was as. . . Well. . . Pig headed, as an angry wild boar. Except maybe Jamison Andrew Fawkes.

     Cracking his knuckles, the Dryad growled, lowering himself to be more in line with the boar’s impending charge. Charge indeed it did. Without hesitation, it ran right for Jamison as if the Dryad wasn’t six feet taller when stooped over and built like . . . A tree. The impact, calculated carefully by Jamison, worked in his favor. He grabbed the great tusks and with a quick _jerk_ and a sound _twist_ the boar collapsed to the ground, paralyzed and dying.

     “Oh no!” Rae clambered down from her perch and ran to the great fallen beast. “He was just protecting his mate!”

     Jamison, eyes firey with the fight he’d just won, turned on her. “So was I, darl’. So was I.”

     “I didn’t consent to that!”

     “It doesn’t make it not true!”

     “I didn’t ask you to protect me!”

     There was a short pause as he looked at her, lips a tight line of anger. “You seem to think you needed to.”

     Rae opened her mouth, hand on the Boar’s chest as it stopped breathing. She shut it. It was true. She’d never asked him to protect her, yet here he was, yet again, saving her from her own stupidity.

     “I. . .’m. . . Sorry.” She said slowly, quietly. “Thank you.”

     Jamison was struck dumb by that admission. He stared at her for a few moments before scooping her up into his arms. “We’re going home. The meadow’s growing well, but I think it misses it’s Sunshine.”

     Rae submitted to his lifting her up, but wriggled until she was perched on his shoulders. “Why do you call me that?”

     “Because y’are, darl’. You bring life and renewal. I think that might be what you are, now, y’know? Renewal. Change. I used to try to do that. I was pretty shoddy at it, though. I think you’ll be better.”

     “Oh.” They walked the rest of the way home in silence as Rae digested that.

 


	3. In which Rae realizes her Power

     “Okay. Now what?”

     “Well. You just. . . Pull.”

     Rae lifted her hand from the soil, cupping the wet, earthy loam easily as a worm wriggled through her fingers. She stared at it dispassionate and unimpressed.

     “Right. . .”

     “No, not. . . Not physically pull. . .” Jamison sounded frustrated. He'd been trying to teach her about the forest and their magic for three weeks now, and she just didn't seem to get the idea. “You sort of pull. . . From here.”

     Rae arched a brow as he set a wooden finger over her sternum in the middle of her chest. Their relationship, while still cool, had mellowed since he'd saved her from the boar. She no longer flinched away when he tried to touch her, and he no longer shadowed her like a stalker. It was refreshing. . . But she still wasn't understanding what he wanted her to do.

     “Okay. So. I have powers, and to use them, I have to . . . To 'pull'. . . From my _chest._ ” She sighed softly. “I don't know how to do that.”

     “It's. . . It's sort of like. . . Heartache? Longing? The overpowering urge to-”

     “No, we're not doing that!”

     “No!” Fawkes yelped in alarm, his rough hewn face coloring ever so slightly around the edges. “Not _that._ It's more like homesickness and a desire to make things happen.”

     “Oh.” Rae colored as well for jumping to a conclusion he clearly hadn't meant. He had been incredibly careful not to push Rae towards something he knew she was unwilling to give. He was giving her space, and she was thankful for that. “Sorry.”

     “It's alright. Just concentrate.” He replied, shrugging it off like it didn't hurt him inside to be rebuffed for no reason. “Try to. . . To _will_ the earth to come to you. Think it, really hard.”

     They'd been over this before. She'd been trying to 'call' the earth for the past week. After long sunlit days conversing about technique and how Magic and Science weren't mutually exclusive fields of practice, it was much harder in application than in theory. She yearned for the warm sunlight of her favorite clearing and sighed softly.

     “Rae? Are you alright? You're not paying any attention and if I didn't know better, I'd say you weren't trying at all.”

     “What?” Rae started, shaking her head to clear it. “I. . . Yes. I'm alright, sorry. I. . . My mind just isn't here right now. I'm. . . Hungry.”

     “Oh.” Jamison pursed his lips, angry with himself for not noticing her need. “Of course. Come on. We'll go to the pond down by the three fallen pines.”

     “Could we go to my meadow, instead?”

     “Hmm? I suppose.”

     Rae burst into a bright smile and jumped to her feet. Her leaves, budding and dancing about her with a whispering music, fell to her ankles in a waving, springy fabric of life. Her hair buds were just beginning to bloom, snow white edged with the same orange that shone in his own eyes. To Jamison, there was nothing so beautiful as this.

     “Race you!” Rae grinned and took off into the shaded wood.

     “Wh-Hey!” The dryad squeaked and launched himself after her.

     “Last one there's a Rotten Apple!”

     “Hey!” He protested, laughter bubbling up from deep in his soul. “I'm already a rotten apple!”

     “Sucks to be you then, I guess!” Her laughter danced through the boughs of the trees and egged him on, but something caught his eye that made him skid to a halt. Her trail. . . Was covered with little white flowers. White flowers, edged in orange. She was calling life! _**Unconsciously**_! She was _**doing it**_!

     “Rae!” He called to her, excitement bursting out of his chest. “Rae, look!”

     “What?” She slowed to a halt and turned to face him, brow furrowed. She looked down, where he was pointing at the grass at her feet, and she gasped. “Oh my god!”

     “You're doing it, Rae!”

     “I what? ME? How!? I didn't even. . . I didn't call! I was just. . .”

     He rushed to her and swung her into a tight hug, making her wheeze and pound his shoulder. “Lemm-go! Air!”

     “Oh. Sorry. I'm so sorry! I was jus-”

     “Excited.” Rae panted, rubbing her side and smiling to take the sting out. “No, it's alright. So. . . I did that?”

     Jamison nodded, grinning like a child at Yule. “Yes! They popped up at you ran. They answered your Call!”

     “But. . . I didn't call them. I just ran.”

     “Just lived. Your life called t-” At that moment, the male's stomach rumbled, creaking like an old oak in a windstorm. “Come on, we can talk about it while we eat.”

     The thought of eating dulled Rae's mood slightly. She had been less hungry for the things Jamison ate, lately. He subsisted mostly on fish, and herbs, and some insect life, which was unappetizing even when she was still human. Now that she was part tree, however. . . Food didn't seem to have the same sort of power over her that it used to. She found that if she sat quietly in her meadow in the warm, late spring sunshine, she felt increasingly less hungry as the day wore on.

     She figured it just meant that she was photosynthesizing her energy now, and Rae wasn't sure how she felt about that. Eating was something humans did, and losing that aspect of herself was. . . Unnerving. _But. . ._  she thought, as Jamison dug several beetle larvae out of the soft dirt of the clearing, _It was less unnerving than a diet of bugs and raw fish._

     Sighing, she flopped bonelessly down on the warm, scented earth and closed her eyes. “So, I did it, huh? How do I replicate it without knowing how it happened in the first place?”

     “Unno.” Mumbled Jamison before slurping a grub completely into his mouth and crunching it with a satisfying pop. “Some of us have an easier time with magic when our emotions run high.”

     “I've certainly been frustrated enough.” Rae protested, rolling slightly to look at him. She regretted it immediately as he tossed another fat grub into the air and caught it, much like she had once done with popcorn at home.

     “Frustration's all well an' good, Darl',” he murmured, smiling. “But I'm talking anger, fury, love, joy, hatred. Y'know, REAL strong emotion.”

     “So how come I didn't summon magic when I was dying? Or when the boar attacked me?” She asked, rolling back to stare, eyes closed, into the warm blue sky.

     “Probably because you weren't ready to, yet. Magic is something that grows in us, and needs to be cultivated and used. Like muscles or a flowering vine.”

     “I see.” Rae replied, but she wasn't sure that she did.

     “You _can_ do it, Rae. I know you can. And as time goes on, you'll be able to do it without the high emotion, as well.”

     “I don't know. . .”

     “Let's try it again, then.” Jamison said encouragingly. “This time, instead of trying for that longing, pulling sensation, see if you can conjure up feelings of joy, like you did on the way here, and use that to urge the earth to grow.”

     Rae pursed her lips and frowned. “I don't know. . .” She said again.

     “Just try. It can't hurt anything, right?”

     “I suppose so.” She conceded and sighed, shifting to sit cross-legged on the grass. She placed her hands on the sun-warmed greenery and closed her eyes. Rae thought of her happiest times. She thought of her grandfather's house in the fall, with it's glorious colors. The smells of Thanksgiving and Christmas and the laughter of her tiny family. The tree from their own forest shimmering in a corner with a few papered gifts hiding under it's shadow. She remembered, as a young girl, no more than fourteen, looking into the pine box. It seemed so small to contain such a person as her Grandfather. It seemed tiny. How could he. . . How could he have left her?  
Around her, rain spattered in what had moments before been a sun-drenched glade. Rae blinked, opening her eyes and frowned in disappointment. She had meant to bring life, but had only brought rain. . . Or her luck was just that bad.

     As the downpour intensified, Jamison watched her, dripping and impervious to the discomfort of the wet. “What. . . What did you think of that caused you-”  
The woman cut him off before he could finish his statement. “It's not any of your business!” She snapped and got to her feet, fleeing into the dark shadows of the sodden forest.

     The dryad raised himself to follow but, other than reaching out to her and calling her name, he let her flee. She obviously needed space. . . He knelt to pluck a flower from the grass. White with orange tips, just like hers. He sighed and set out for home.

     Rae snarled as she smashed through the undergrowth. “Judgemental asshole.” He'd been about to ask her what had caused her such pain, but in her distress, she'd automatically believed he was about to ask her what caused her to fail. She believed it deep in her heart. She was a failure and was unsure why he had taken her for the forest. She was a HUMAN meant to live in the human world. . .

     “Oh, you poor thing.” A sibilant whisper shushed through the leaves, just louder than the hiss of the rain falling through the branches. “Alone, abandoned, mocked. . . Stolen from your home and forced to serve. . .”

     “I. . .” She stopped short, scowling into the dimness. “I'm not alone. . . Or abandoned.

     “Oh, but aren't you?” An indistinct figure stepped towards her. “You have been, since. . . Since your Grandfather's death, haven't you?”

     Rae gasped, stepping backwards, hand flying to the necklace she still wore. “How did you know about my Grandfather?”

     The face, who's features she couldn't quite place, smirked. “Oh, we all know about THAT one. He was famous among our kind. The One Who Left.”

     “What?!”

     “The One Who Left.” The shadowy creature replied. “He didn't tell you? Oh yes, your Grandfather was of the forest. He was one of us. He found a way to sever the ties of magic to the forest and left to pursue love amongst the humans.”

     “Wha-I don't. . .”

     “No, I didn't think you would. . . There's too much human blood in your veins still for you to understand. You should never have come.”

     Righteous indignation flared up in Rae and thunder crackled and thrummed around them. Somewhere nearby she heard the sickening crack-crack-BOOM of a falling tree. “It's not like I wanted it! I was QUITE happy with my life in the human world.” Even as she said the words, she wondered if she had been happy at all since she was fourteen and she'd kissed her Grandfather goodbye for the last time.

     “Oh of course not. Of course not. That isn't what I meant.” The voice continued silkily. “Didn't I say that you were stolen and forced into slavery to _him_?”

     Rae was taken aback by the venom infused into that word. The creatures that lived here truly did hate Jamison, didn't they? _Well, why shouldn't they?_ She thought. _He'd thought it was perfectly okay to kidnap her from her life and lead her into the forest to be his little 'mate'._

     The shadow took that moment to smile and offer her a hand. “I bet he's already trying to teach you magic. Is that where the storm came from?”

     “I. . .” She looked down, ashamed. “Yes. I was trying to think of something happy and it turned sad.”

     “Of course it did. I daresay you don't have many happy thoughts to dwell on right now. . .”

     “No, I. . .” She burst into tears, wrapping her arms around herself and ignoring the proffered hand. “I just want to go home. . .”

     “I know you do. No one wants that more than you, but we, the other spirits. . . We've seen your suffering. You have friends among us. I promise.”

     Sniffling, Rae nodded, wiping her face. “I can't go home. He won't let me. He did some sort of name binding thing and now I can't leave the forest or do anything he doesn't want me to do.”

     The shadow grunted and turned to fade into the woods. “We know. We will try to find a way to help you.”

     “Th-thank you. Wait. . . What is your name?”

     “That's a powerful and personal thing to ask one of our kind, Rae of the Grove of Rebirth.” He had stopped, not turning to look at her. “But you may call me Shadow.”

     Rae nodded and murmured her thanks into the empty space he had just occupied. Stealing herself, she also turned to the path that would take her back to what was now her home.

 


End file.
